SAN FRANCISCO – A judge Monday rejected Elizabeth Holmes’ requests for a new trial, paving the way for the entrepreneur to be convicted next week for defrauding investors and possibly sent to jail later this month.
Ms. Holmes, who was convicted in January of four counts of fraud and conspiracy while running her blood testing start-up, Theranos, has spent the intervening months trying to change her fate. She had filed three requests for a new trial based on newly obtained evidence.
But in an injunction on Monday, Judge Edward J. Davila of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rejected the requests and said they failed to meet the bar for a new trial.
Ms. Holmes, 38, is expected to be sentenced on Nov. 18. Each count of fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, most likely to be served concurrently.
In court last month, Ms Holmes was found to be pregnant with a second child. She has been released on bail and lives in Woodside, California, with her partner and young son. She is expected to appeal after the conviction.
A lawyer for Ms Holmes did not respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Holmes had requested a retrial based on new evidence, including an unusual visit to her home in August by Dr. Adam Rosendorff, a key witness for the prosecution.
After Mrs. Holmes claimed that Dr. Rosendorff had made statements that questioned his testimony, Judge Davila ordered him to appear in court to corroborate his testimony.
At the booth last month, Dr. Rosendorff, who was Theranos’ lab director and helped expose the company’s fraud, explains that he had visited Mrs. Holmes to help find the seal and put the saga behind him.
The lawyers of Mr. Holmes stated Dr. Rosendorff in question while testifying at the trial. They used a comment he made at Mrs. Holmes’ house to accuse the government of distorting what was happening in Theranos.
dr. Rosendorff testified that his statements in the gallery — which lasted six days during Ms. Holmes’s four-month trial last year — were all correct. He specified that a comment he made — that “everyone was working so hard to do something good and meaningful” at Theranos — specifically did not include Ms. Holmes or Ramesh Balwani, her co-conspirator.
In a 15-page injunction on Monday, Judge Davila said he would not accept Dr. Rosendorff had found credible under oath. He said Ms Holmes’s other requests for a new trial, taking arguments from Mr. Balwani and a missing database of test results were also not worthy of a new trial.
Judge Davila wrote in places that Ms. Holmes’s arguments were “immaterial,” “would burden credulity” and “probably not lead to acquittal if included in a retrial.”
Mr Balwani, 57, was convicted this summer on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy and will be sentenced on December 7.
